Not yet a hero!

By Emmanuelle

THEY do not march off the gods from their thrones just like that. Na-ah. Senators, writers or sometime-soldiers can not have it so easy.  

They have to be real heroes first. And real heroes, more often  than not, are shot with their  brothers at some dark huts. Or as they turn around at the end of their march from the fort to Bagumbayan. Or right at the tarmac even before they  set  foot on the land to die for.
     

Then, and only then, will the not dead begin to do the deed for  them. What deed? The deed of marching off the gods from their thrones.

And by the au pair words not dead, we mean the gising (those who are aware), the mulat (those who are involved), as opposed to the tulog  (those who chose to close their eyes), the litang (the dizzy and the ditzy).

The millions of day-to-day mga bayaning walang mukha, trudging one weary foot after the other, answering to anger, a hunger for change. Locking arms. Crossing fingers. Praying; may the change be for the better and may it last longer this time, we have already failed so many times, we really are so tired. Amen.   

Ah, we still do have the near-heroes living, a-plenty of them, but not sufficient enough unto themselves to inspire and to galvanize the millions of the marching not dead. Besides, most of these near-heroes are near-retirement, retired or even near-octogenarians by now. Their sights have dimmed, their voices have thinned. And if they were not speaking ambiguous statements, they were thinking ambiguous thoughts.

And the young near-heroes in-training are just that. Young. In training.

So what should real heroes have to do to be declared as real heroes, aside from dying a gloriously earth-shaking death?

It helps to be multi-talented and to have the ability to do multi-tasking.  And being nationally, if not universally, acclaimed when still on earth and more so, when buried beneath all that earth. Like being all, if not mostly, and at the same time – a dreamer, thinker, writer, philosopher, composer, inventor, healer, speaker, leader, organizer, fighter. Not the R at the beginning of learning (as in Reading, and the atrociously misspelled two other Rs) but the end of the word r  to denote the doer. He who goes out and does, and not he who nods done, sir.  

Being an economist, a banker, a corporation president, a stock-exchange player or the like is not necessarily a requirement.

Setting aside his disqualification of being alive and well, well-behind those bars, again, for the meantime, he who walked out with the others from the court to the royal courtyard of the peninsulares share a common brow with the thinkers – a forehead stretching widely so far back to the top of the skull. Lots of space for loads of sharply smart brain cells.

Though not sharp nor smart enough to have gauged the Pinoy spirit – that magic ingredient to move millions. Millions to march off the gods from their thrones.

The Pinoy spirit was never there in the plush many-starred hotels. Na-ah. Not in Oakwood, not even in Rockwell. Not in the Makati of the Ayalas. Though they initially surged, then later sporadically snaked, then lately woefully wormed their power along the length and breadth of EDSA, from number one to sawa. The Pinoy spirit did not start there, and hopefully will not end there.

It began in the seed that is sown and grown in the hearts of every Filipino, regardless of where they are and how they live their lives. It is in imbedded in the concept of the word I believe. They simply have to believe – in the person, in the cause, in the fight.   

If they believed, millions would have braved hours of traffic to get there on time. Also the big C from exhaust pipes, pneumonia from the rain, asthma and tears from the smokebombs, bullets from friendly fires, the loss of thank-God-it’s-Friday night, and the holding cells of  Bicutan.  If they believed.

I bet my one and only USB that PGMA, FGMA and all of the alphabets know this.

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/feelings/
Readers may reach columnist at jingmil@yahoo.com . For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)

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